Player Progression:

So, in mid Feb they stated that players could progress as they wanted to. either through farming, building buildings and renting them out or adventuring.

Anyone know how far along that is? I'm quite curious, together with a few friends of mine we're waiting for that to be soli in place so we can start. We collectively decided to leave it until then.

 

I have no idea, all I know is that unless you have the money (pixels) sucks to be you.

 

in one of the daily updates the mentioned they updated how farming works
awhile ago Armagon showed part of a dungeon thingy
no word on building
lots of updates on the combat system

 

Ahh, so to put it in short (sorry, I'm one of those kinda guys that prefer things straightforward instead of polite) although they said they would do something back in February it hasn't really gone through yet. and it's quite possible they're not even sure what they want to do let alone have it anywhere near done?

Guess I'll simply let them at it, and check again in September or so. Some people would get upset by this but, I don't get those people. As long as it's not vaporware

 

That's Early Access for you.

 

When I was young I watched the X-Men cartoon. There was this one scene where Magneto got rid of a T-Rex, without using any of his powers. He said (and I quote) "Patience Charles all things come to those who wait." I took that lesson to heart.

 

And I waited an past an entire console generation for Pikmin 3, and it was well worth it.

I've come to the conclusion that if you're willing to start charging for a product, then it should be allowed to be criticized.
(They didn't have to release a beta, they could have just done a kickstarter style of thing).

 

Well,I waited over 8 years for a new Sly Cooper.It blew so much furry dck I just gave it to one of my friends as a parting gift(had to move outta town,what can ya do?)

I genuinely hope they step it up,as do most of us,but I still respect the time it takes to do so,and so,I pray that Starbound will NOT be like Sly Cooper TiT(yep,even the acronym sucks )

 

...Halflife 3 confirmed...?

They've mentioned how they plan for farming to work. The new progression system should be in update Rampaging Koala soon.

 

I hope that they actually do something instead of just "Hey, you like farming? Grind some money and progress!"

Seriously, they could do something like... grow a living vine that fights for you against waves of monsters or you dig up some piece or part for a machine you need or something...

Seriously, the idea of needing money to progress is just laziness, imagine if you needed to collect money to open doors in Metroid, that would be a nightmare...

 

Well they have been working on Ouposts which from memory is the hub in which much of those feature revolve. Buying/selling and finding NPC's to inhabit your buildings etc.

 

Would be cool to make hotels for NPCs and their cost varies based on the difficulty of the sector, beauty of the biome/planet, size dimensions of the room(s) and materials it's made from.

What I don't understand, though, is "players [being able to] progress as they [want]" because progression in my mind would mean moving forward through the equipment/tech/system teirs (IE. Iron -> middle bits -> Durasteel -> etc.). If players could progress through Farming, Trading, Fighting, Exploring, Questing, and Renting homes or whatever, how would that work? One way I can think of is what most games do which is either pick a dominant progression line and make it mandatory (questing or exploring) or require the player to do all of them to move forward but some of the things like farming depend on progression, rather than help you move forward.

In many MMOs and such, mining or gathering is usually something you can do on the side and by progressing through the game, you can unlock more things to harvest. It makes sense for those games, but in this case these features are being offered as a sort of secondary path you can take instead of the "main mission/progression" rather than depending on it. The first line of my post follows the idea of depending on the main progression in it's current form, but there could be more to it, though. The only way I can imagine progression without physically mining your own materials and crafting the next armor set or whatever is farming up enough pixels through a "business" of sorts (selling crops, renting homes, earning cash from prize fights or trade routes) and then purchasing progression, much like Pay2Win games, but you're using pixels.

What do you guys think? What do you know? What do I know? Who am I? What??

 

I do agree its hard to see how progression besides armor and or "level" works, but thats only because its how pretty much every other game works
in the end with farming (as this is the only one I really know how it works) you are going up in"tier" just not an armor tier or weapon tier, but crop tiers with higher level more expensive plants to grow and sell
with building I would assume you get richer customers to rent houses to. what ever it is progression is not about how much you can kill but how much money you can make, which is a little more realistic

 

I take it you haven't played many games. The most successful titles use new abilities and equipment to overcome old obstacles. Metroidvania titles are the most successful at this. Not only does the hero directly improve through raw stat upgrades, but they gain powers like ice weapons, high jumping, dashing, grapple hooking and wall jumping. These powers are used to "unlock" new areas of course, but they also make the entire game easier at the same time.

So let's try it for questing. Sure, you can quest with nothing but the shirt on your back and a pickaxe. But add a piece of armor and it becomes safer. Add a double jump and you can travel more easily.

Farming? A backhoe is simple to start with. But next you might find a thresher, or a crawling robot that harvests crops. A climate control system might grow crops faster or let you plant in more hostile zones. NPCs might be able to work the farm providing simple labor and thus less player effort. Your own ship might be able to shoot crop seeds across entire swaths of the planet.

A merchant may start with a simple store. But by building him more space, more rooms and adding more decorations, he can become wealthier with more goods to trade.

This shit isn't hard to come up with. You start with something simple, and add on new/increasingly exotic ways to make it better. Ta daa. That's literally all there is to it.

 

I'd really love to see a Recettear style merchant game. Player puts up a shop, places items for sale, can try and use the local market fluctuations to gouge people or make better deals. People lining up to get their deals, when you sell all your products or after a certain period of time the mini-game ends and you get your pixels.

 

Might be cool, but NPC interaction isn't really a strength of Starbound. What it does have is a fully interactive and destructible environment with an unlimited supply of explorable worlds. The player can literally build everything in their city from the ground up, so why not take advantage of that ability?

 

NPC interaction is going to play a much bigger role in progression once outposts are created. It's even the basis for the Landlord progression path.